Counsel tried again: "I have a conviction that we should first offer
this to a magazine--through--yes, of course, through some influential
friend. If one doesn't want it another may----"
Chorus: "Ho! they will all want it! That was not written laz' night!
'Tis fivty year' old; they cannot rif-use that!"
"However," Chester persisted, "if they should--if all should--I'd
advise----"
"Frien's," Castanado pleaded, "let us hear."
"I should advise that we gather together as many such old narratives as
we can find, especially such as can be related to one another----"
"They need not be ril-ated!" cried Dubroca. "_We_ are not ril-ated,
and yet see! Ril-ated? where you are goin' to find them, ril-ated?"
"Royal Street!" Scipion retorted. "Royal Street is pave' with old
narration'!"
"Already," said Castanado, "we chanze to have three or four.
Mademoiselle has that story of her _grand'mère_, and Mr. Chezter he
has--sir, you'll not care if I tell that?--Mr. Chezter has _the sequal
to that_, and written by his uncle!"
"Yes," Chester put in, "but Ovide Landry finds it was printed years
ago."
"Proof!" proclaimed Mme. Alexandre, "proof that 'tis good to print
ag-ain! The people that read that before, they are mozely dead."
"At the same time," Chester responded, rising and addressing the chair,
his hostess, "because that is a sequel to the _grand'-mère's_ story,
and because _this_--this West Indian episode--is not a sequel and has
no sequel, and particularly because we ought to let mademoiselle be
first to judge whether my uncle's _memorandum_ is fit company for her
two stories, I propose, I say, that before we read this West Indian
thing we read my uncle's _memorandum_, and that we send and beg her to
come and hear it with us. It's in my pocket."
Patter, patter, patter, went a dozen hands.
"Marcel," the hostess cried in French, "go!"
"I will go with you," Mme. Alexandra proposed, "she will never come
without me."
"Tis but a step," said Mme. De l'Isle, "the three of us will go
together." They went.
Those who waited talked on of their city's true stories. The vastest
and most monstrous war in human history was smoking and roaring just
across the Atlantic, and in it they had racial, national, personal
interests; but for the moment they left all that aside. "One troub',"
Dubroca said, "'tis that all those three stone'--and all I can
rim-ember--even that story of M'sieu' Smith about the fall of the
city--1862--they all got in them _somewhere_, alas! the nigger. The
_publique_ they are not any longer pretty easy to fascinate on that
subjec'."
"Ho!" Beloiseau rejoined, "_au contraire_, he's an advantage! If only
you keep him for the back-_ground_; biccause in the mind of
every-_body_ tha'z where he is, and that way he has the advantage to
ril-ate those storie' together and----"
Mademoiselle came. Her arrival, reception, installation near the
hostess and opposite Chester are good enough untold. If elsewhere in
that wide city a like number ever settled down to listen to an untamed
writer's manuscript in as sweet content with one another _their_ story
ought to be printed. "Well," Mme. Castanado chanted, "commence." And
Chester read:
X